Bluetooth low energy (BLE) is a technology intended to perform Bluetooth communication at reduced power and is attracting attention recently.
As one of applications utilizing BLE technology, there is a beacon service that provides shop/product information using a BLE transmitter.
In a beacon service, a plurality of service relays (e.g., Bluetooth beacon transmitters) may be installed adjacent to one another in a short-range wireless communication environment. Often, too much information is displayed to users and may bother them. Accordingly, it is necessary to control the amount of provided information appropriately.
As the number of users using beacon services increases, more shops join them for their marketing and promotion. Accordingly, the amount of contents received by user terminals also increases.
In this connection, contents that are received by a user terminal via a beacon service are automatically displayed to a user without any operation after a beacon signal is recognized. Such contents displayed automatically may bother users.
In view of above, in order to improve service quality of beacon services, aggressive filtering on contents is required that allows only contents that are useful to users to be displayed.
In addition, beacon services may provide a location-based service that provides local information, shop information, product information, etc., appropriate for the location of a user terminal by utilizing the location information of the user terminal.
To this end, a beacon service requires a beacon terminal transmitting a short-range wireless signal conforming to the Bluetooth specification, for example, to be located in each shop. If a user terminal enters a shop, it recognizes the beacon signal and transmits related information to a service server. Then, the service server recognizes the location information of the user terminal, to thereby provide contents appropriate for the location.
Since every shop has a beacon terminal, however, there is a burden of high cost for installing and maintaining beacon devices such as fixing the beacon devices, replacing batteries, etc.
In addition, as the coverage of a beacon signal output from a beacon terminal installed in a shop is limited to the inside or vicinity of the shop, it is not possible to provide potential customers with information associated with the shop until they approaches the shop.